


The Secret Side Of Me

by sweetNsimple



Series: "Morally and Legally Unacceptable Histories" ~ Nanao-chan [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Belly Kink, Cannibalism, Clint Is a Good Bro, Feeding Kink, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Siege of Leningrad, Steve Has Issues, Steve Loves Blowjobs, Steve Takes Care Of His People, Tony Has Issues, Tony Won't Take Your Weight Shaming, Vore, What Have I Done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 05:52:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1293721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetNsimple/pseuds/sweetNsimple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I feel it deep within/ It's just beneath the skin/ I must confess that I feel like a monster/ I hate what I've become/ The nightmare's just begun/ I must confess that I feel like a monster!" ~ Skillet's "Monster"</p><p>Steve butted his forehead against Tony's.  “I love you.”</p><p>“I think it goes without saying that I might just feel the same way about you,” Tony drawled.</p><p>“Maybe.  I think I'd like to hear it anyway.”</p><p>“Well, fine.  I love you, Hannibal Lecter.  Please don't feed me anymore people.”</p><p>He smiled.  “I'll see what I can do.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Never Let You See

Steven Grant Rogers waited for their hostess to turn her back before he took the boiled meat out of his second-in-command's hands. James Barnes made a horrible, hungry sound in the very back of his throat, soft enough to be ignored by the elderly woman but not by Steve.

 

Rogers narrowed his eyes at him and shook his head, and then smiled politely when the hostess glanced at them from a weathered face.

 

It was 1942, and they were in the Leningrad, Union of Soviet Socialists Republics, trying to survive mid-winter with the temperatures plunging below freezing. They were supposed to be eradicating HYDRA soldiers and evacuating the city by way of the Road of Life – avoiding the barrier of Finnish to the North and the Germans at the highways to the South.

 

It wasn't going according to plan, like most infiltrations and liberations in the USSR went. Dernier, Morita, and Dugan were with Carter in Tikhvin, waiting to hear back from him and Bucky. They had gotten in by the railway, and it should have been as easy as taking the road to Zaborie back.

 

Communications were down, the city was frozen, and some distant part of Rogers' sanity was trying to snap free and dissolve into nothing. There was a dying trickle of supplies that managed to make it to the city, but it wasn't enough, not nearly enough, for even anyone.

 

He waited for the kindly woman who had allowed them into her home to retire for the night before he talked to Bucky. He still held the meat in his hand, which kept his second-in-command's rapt attention.

 

“I need you to think for a just a moment,” he whispered urgently, grabbing Bucky by the jaw and forcing him to meet his eyes. “The city is starving. There aren't even any strays on the streets. Where did she get fresh meat?”

 

“I don't know – the zoo?” Bucky swallowed thickly as he looked back down at the food in Rogers' fist.

 

“The zoo's empty, Bucky. It went before the pets did. So where. Did. The meat come from?”

 

Finally, Bucky looked up at him, and he knew hat his best friend could actually see him this time. They were familiar with hunger, they had suffered through it together as kids, and the cold was no stranger either. But even their ratty blankets and the lumpy mattress they had shared had retained more heat than the old woman's holey living room floor, and Steve hadn't known a winter colder than -15. If he had, it probably would have killed him. This winter, this place, had drained them of more life than childhood poverty had, and it showed in the hollows of Bucky's cheeks, in the glaze of his stare, in the dark circles around his eyes as if he hadn't dared go to sleep in fear of never waking up again.

 

Steve let the meat fall to the floor. “Bucky,” he said. “There were milk teeth in her cooking pot.”

 

There was a moment where he thought that some ounce of moral had managed to overcome Bucky's hunger. He certainly saw it war across his face. Then, with too great finality, he crouched down and picked the food back up. “More reason for it not to go to waste,” he told Rogers.

 

For some reason, that logic made it all the harder to fight the want to share with Bucky.

 

~::~

 

He thought he and Bucky would leave it behind. He thought, after they managed to leave with HYDRA safely disbanded, that they would never talk about that winter in Leningrad, with the elderly woman who had, for a good few days, sat in their bellies.

 

Bucky left it behind with the same grace and straightforwardness he had left behind the prison camp. It was Steve who brought it with him.

 

He watched his troops, the Howling Commandos, and he made sure they never felt the hunger he and Bucky had felt. Something had changed inside of him. Not broken, not shattered, not even reborn – just shifted. One principle turned to another. _Do not eat your neighbor_ became _Do not let your neighbor go hungry_.

 

He hadn't joined the war to kill anyone. It was something that happened, something that couldn't be avoided, but it didn't bring Steve any joy to pull the trigger and know that someone's heart stopped beating because his aim and timing was better than theirs.

 

There would always be bodies, he knew. There was no stopping the bullet once it left the chamber and traveled out of the barrel to take down his enemy.

 

_More reason for it not to go to waste_ .

 

The Howling Commandos weren't like him. They didn't ask where the meat came from. All they knew was that, after C-rations, it was the best goddamned thing they had tasted, and it left them feeling strong and healthy. They probably already knew.

 

Bucky knew, and he looked at Steve long and hard the first time steaks went on the fire outside of the USSR.

 

He ate it anyway, and Rogers had felt relief unlike any other.

 

~::~

 

Some habits die hard.

 

Steve was not naive enough to believe that he could let every villain live, just like he wasn't cruel enough to kill them all. It wasn't always an easy choice, and he sometimes leaned dangerously close to making the wrong call because he couldn't keep his own emotions in check, but he usually managed to do the right thing.

 

Usually.

 

There was no shortage of food at the Avengers Tower. No need for Steve to  carry the  primer portions of an  A.I.M. minion carcass  from the bowels of the S.H.I.E.L.D. morgue into his private kitchen  via a gym bag  and get to work on it, skinning  the torso and legs like he had taught himself to do and then stripping away the choicer cuts of meat and organs.  He neatly and carefully sawed the head open and immediately put the brain on ice to stop it from turning to mush. In his mind, he was already  choosing which cuts to use and how to present the tongue to Tony  without letting him know it was a tongue . 

 

He... sort of had a crush on Tony. It had been slow building, and not without frustration and blowouts, but his feelings for the other man were definitely growing by the day. Rogers  opened the freezer box Tony had gotten him (“Tony, I don't want you to – No, Tony, stop, you don't even know why I need that, TONY –”) and carefully stacked away what he wasn't using that night.

 

He wanted to spoil Tony and make sure that he ate enough, like he had made sure that his men had.

 

It would be cautious work, though, to feed his Avengers and Tony this way. This wasn't war anymore, not like World War II had been. He could just as easily go to a butcher shop and get fine beef and pork cuts without pushing his hands into a human corpse.

 

He considered it for one moment, actually pondered on whether or not he could drag that moral part of himself back and fold away the cannibalistic tendencies.

 

Then he thought about his men, eating the flesh of a man Steve had killed to keep them safe. And he thought about the A.I.M. soldier in the freezer box that he had taken down, that he was going to serve to his Avengers and Tony.

 

The shame lasted for a very short moment that he would choose to feed his unknowing team the meat of their enemy. Then he simply hummed, and the tongue sizzled on the stove top while he made sweetbreads from the thymus.

 

He promised himself, at least, that he wouldn't do this often. Best not to rouse suspicion. Best not to make it a common occurrence.

 

Certainly for the best.

 

Then he watched Tony's expression light up as he ate, saw Bruce dig in with uncharacteristic charisma, saw Natasha even appreciate her steak with a quirked eyebrow, and he amended, well...

 

Maybe he would try to do this a few times a year.

 

~::~

 

Every other month, they had a steak night, and Steve fed Tony tongues and livers and  brains and hearts. He enjoyed the steaks just as well as the rest of the team, but he always looked for that extra something special from Steve. He badgered Steve for his recipes, even though he didn't cook, had very rarely cooked, and couldn't cook. He tried to blackmail Steve into telling him what he was eating.

 

Steve carefully redirected the conversation every time, and eyed Tony's softening edges with great and almost animalistic appreciation. Tony had never eaten enough, and now it was like he was never full.

 

Steve wholeheartedly approved.

 

One day, a year after deciding to feed his team – his  _family_ – in his chosen way, he looked up and Tony stood there at the coffeemaker, looking down at his belly with a frown.

 

“Hey, Steve,” he said, because they had progressed to first names by that point, “do I look like I'm getting fat?” And he had run his hands over his abdomen, pinching at skin and flab.

 

Steve knew that moment to be when he lost control over himself and attacked.

 

Tony tasted rich, like his coffee, and strong, like his scotch, with a metallic aftertaste that made Steve growl into his mouth. His hands had found Tony's hips – rounding now, so wonderful to squeeze and feel how well taken care of his Tony was –

 

Tony was his now, right?

 

He pulled back just a bit, just to see Tony's expression.

 

It was dazed and hungry and it very quickly became upset and needy. “Hey, no, why did you stop? Come back here –”

 

Tony was most certainly his now.

 

He showed Tony, in his bed (because it was closer than Tony's) just how much he adored his softened planes. Tony couldn't be classified as 'fat' or 'chubby', but he had lost abdominal definition to the point where a pooch had formed. His upper body remained hard and tight from his manual labor, and his legs strong and firm from his unending restlessness. But there, sitting in the cradle of his hips, was Steve's hard work and fantasies.

 

He dug his fingers in till he knew it would bruise.

 

“You're beautiful,” he told Tony.

 

Tony's eyebrows came together. “Oh, God, this is a kink of yours, isn't it?”

 

He shrugged. He knew what a kink was – he better after living with Tony. “Maybe. Does it feel like it?” And he rubbed himself against Tony's inner thigh, watching the other man's face go from delightfully curious to wanting again.

 

“Ooooh, yeah. Definitely. Definitely feels like it. Have you been fattening me up on purpose? Wait, how long have you been wanting to do this? How long ago should I have tackled you and –”

 

“Tony,” Steve interrupted. He braced his knees on either side of Tony's chest, holding his weight off of the arc reactor. He tangled one hand in Tony's hair and brought his face close to his erection, eyes on his expression “I was wondering if you could show me what _else_ your mouth is good at.” He nudged forward, bumping against his lips to make sure that there were no misunderstandings.

 

Tony's eyes were huge and dark, face flushed pleasantly as his bruised lips parted. “Yeah. Yeah, I could show you a trick or two I know.” He wrapped his hands around Steve's hips. “Hold on tight, baby – wouldn't want you to get lost.”

 

That made absolutely no sense. Right up until he was in Tony's mouth and –  _God_ – he had no clue which way was up and which way was down. He bunched his hand in Tony's hair, possibly too tight and too far gone to care. “Tony!” he yelled, and then he forced his eyes open and looked down.

 

Breathing was, for several minutes, not an option. He watched his cock disappear into Tony's mouth again and again, watched Tony's saliva slick him up. Listened to him slurp and wheeze, felt his tongue lave and twirl, and it was the single most erotic thing he had ever known.

 

This, he thought, could actually be better than sex itself.

 

His hand became gentle in Tony's hair, more coaxing than forceful.

 

“That's it, Tony,” he crooned, and Tony looked up at him through dark, thick eyelashes. “Does that taste good? Do you like that?”

 

Tony's mouth quirked up, as if he understood something about Steve that he himself did not. He moaned lecherously, pulling back and pressing a sloppy kiss to the head before swallowing down as much as he could in the position they were in.

 

His breath caught in his throat. “That's good, Tony.”  _Take what you need from me_ , he almost said. He stopped himself just before it slipped out because Tony wouldn't understand – to Tony, Steve was taking what Steve needed. He felt behind him and palmed Tony's erection, and was glad that at least Tony got enjoyment from doing this because Steve was willing to beg for this to happen again, probably more than he would plead for anal.

 

“Tony, could you – _yes_ – could you use, just a little teeth?” Tony jerked an eyebrow at him. It wasn't difficult in that moment to know that Tony had far more experience with this than Steve, but even Steve knew that wasn't something most men requested, if not the opposite. “Please?”

 

There was just a tease of it, scraping just barely along the topside of him, sending a jolt through his body. That something normal and male in him sensed danger to its reproductive organs and demanded a retreat.

 

That something bigger that had been there since Leningrad made his cock jump, and he had to bite his bottom lip to stop himself from showing just how much he wanted Tony to nip, to bite, to  _take_ . 

 

Tony was tuned into his body now, though. Steve didn't have to say a word for him to get wicked and plunge into Steve's darkest fantasies without even knowing how deep the depths were. He pulled back and nibbled on the underbelly, just beneath the glans, eyes always on Steve to see how far was too far and how little was too little.

 

Steve's vision whited out. He thought, maybe, someone screamed Tony's name, and then there was peace and gently lapping waves that carried him into black.

 

When he came to, Tony was above him, watching him with awe and pride.

 

Steve's first tangible thought was that he was glad he hadn't fallen on Tony. His second was that his head hurt, so he had probably rammed it into the headboard on his way down.

 

The third roared into his conscious mind and somehow felt like the most important question he would ever have to ask.

 

“Did you swallow?” There was an edge of desperation there that he hoped Tony didn't catch, even as he knew that he had.

 

Tony laughed. “Wow, Captain Kinky.” His voice was rough and husky, teeth flashing, lips swollen and glossy. “Didn't know you were so filthy in bed. Yeah, if it makes you feel better, I swallowed. I'm not gonna let Captain America's swimmers go to waste.”

 

“Oh, God.”

 

“Whoa.” Tony bucked against his side. “So even your refractory period is super, huh? We're gonna have a lot of fun, I can tell.”

 

Steve reached down and cupped Tony in his hand. “You haven't... you know? Yet?”

 

“ _You know_ ,” Tony mocked in good humor. “No, I haven't 'you know' yet. See, I _was_ thinking I'd bounce on some patriotic dick and service my country, but then  I blew Alaska and America shut down.”

 

“... I have no clue what you're talking about.”

 

“Alaska's the biggest state in America,” he explained.

 

Steve glanced down at himself. “Huh,” he said eloquently. “Well, I'm back up –"

 

“ _I'll_ say.”

 

Steve rolled onto his side to face Tony. “Now it's my turn to blow your mind.”

 

“You kind of already have,” Tony answered with surprising honesty. Something lost and a little fragile turned up the corners of his mouth and sparkled in his brown eyes. “Out of plain curiosity, don't feel pressured to answer now, but, uh – what the Hell are we doing? 'Cause, I'm set for anything, really. Nothing like being Captain America's booty call and all, taking care of all your kinks since – what's today?”

 

“Tony.” He cupped the other man's face in his hands. He was pleased when all of that attention, all of that intelligence, centered on him, even if it did feel faintly like having a missile coming straight at him. “I want you. Not just this, even if this is really great, but you. You, Tony. I want to feed you,” and he had to fight back a shiver of pure need. He had never felt like this when he had been feeding his soldiers. “and care for you, and love you.” Tony tried to jerk away but he held on. “No, Tony. I love you.”

 

Tony gaped at him for the longest of times.

 

“Don't run away, don't try to run me off,” Steve warned gently. “You don't have to say it back now, or even think about it. I don't want anything from you that you haven't already given. Except, well, if it's alright with you, I'd like more of what we just did.”

 

“Wow,” Tony said. “I thought you were smarter than that.”

 

“My heart doesn't have a brain,” he teased.

 

“I just, I need to – yeah. I'll get back to you on that.” He tried to roll away. Steve held on.

 

“No running away, Tony.”

 

“Who's running away? I happen to run a Fortune 50 company, create the most high tech gadgets and gizmos the world has ever seen, and, in my spare time, Pepper rules my life with a stiletto heel. I'm a busy, busy man – you'll hear from me. I mean, well, you'll probably see me. We sort of live in the same building...”

 

Tony was trying to slide away again, getting more frantic. Steve knew that rage would come next, and no one could get a hold on Tony in a rage. Thinking of his best interests and future plans, he let go and Tony was off like a rocket without even grabbing his pants.

 

He laid back down in bed, considered all that had just happened and all that he hoped would happen once Tony settled in and got used to the idea of Steve actually loving him.

 

He lifted an arm up to inspect, traced the definition of muscle and tendons with his eyes. He  fisted his hand and his forearm and bicep  flexed .

 

Steve wondered, innocently, if he could rebuild muscle as quickly as he healed from bullet wounds. He got up and slid on a pair of sweatpants from his closet.

 

In his private kitchen, he dipped into the freezer box and pulled out his leather knife roll  and boning apron, setting it down on the cutting table he had chosen to have instead of a dining room table . 

 

In the beginning, with the A.I.M. soldier, it hadn't occurred to him to have all of these helpful utensils. He had been used to just him and his knife and a fire. It wasn't that he hadn't known that there were better knives for the job, or a cleaner way to go about feeding his men, but he had thought that what he hadn't needed back then shouldn't be a necessity now.

 

After six months, though, he had decided to treat himself. The common knives Tony had equipped his kitchen with had dulled and broken from the hard tasks he had set them to, despite being worthy enough to exist in the same tower as a Stark. He had believed it fair to look for the right equipment.

 

One thing he had learned from Tony, at that stage in their relationship, was that there were only two ways to keep a secret from under the predator gaze of the media.

 

The first was to redirect their attention to something else. He could point in another direction and shout and scream till everyone was looking where he wanted, and then he could sneak out the other way. The downfall of this, Tony had said, was that, eventually, someone was going to realize that they were looking at nothing, and they would go snooping for the truth till they found it or something equally uninvited.

 

The second was to flaunt it in their faces and pretend it wasn't a secret at all. It was when someone acted as if they had something to hide that the paparazzi rained in like a hurricane and made every little and big assumption that they could till someone lucked out on the truth or the closest they would ever get to it. And then, even after that, they would continue to speculate and place shame and guilt, because how dare anyone try to have a secret in the public's eye?

 

Steve very calmly asked around for a chef's store, finally found one with everything he needed, and handpicked out several knives and then a leather knife roll to carry them in. He'd put on his best USO face at the counter and had joked with the shark who had followed him about how he made his team a steak dinner whenever he could.

 

No lies. No hiding.

 

And no one ever even asked what kind of steak he was making.  On his way home that day, he had also acquired a gut hook knife from a hunting and fishing store, and had told the media that he did it in honor of his old team, the Howling Commandos, who had occasionally hunted for their own food.

 

It had been slightly more difficult to  acquire an autopsy toolkit, and he hadn't been happy about the money he had to waste for tools he didn't need or want, seeing as how he wasn't planning on sewing anything back up once he was done, but he'd managed nonetheless. He had been ready with a story of how he thought they were just tools of the trade, just like the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife and M3 Trench knife he had in a glass case back home, and how he'd wanted them up  on the wall too  in his bare and lonesome suite. 

 

Luckily, on the same day he had made the purchase (and he was quite curious as to why morgue and autopsy supplies were being sold in a public store), Bruce Banner, also known as the Hulk, had been cajoled by Pepper into a blind date at a tea salon. Bruce had gone and had, patiently and kindly, explained to the starstruck woman that he wasn't interested in a relationship with her, and actually was already in love with someone that he was too afraid to go back to. He assured her, as she grew slightly more frantic, that he was sure she was a lovely lady, but he wasn't the man, if he could be called that, for her.

 

What Pepper hadn't known and what the woman had certainly let no one in on, was that she was Bruce's “biggest fan”, and  s he had pulled a gun out and shot Banner point blank  for denying 'their love' .

 

In the resulting destruction of two city blocks and forty-four wounded with one dead (the blind date), Steve's strange purchase went completely unnoticed.

 

Bruce had been beside himself with grief for nearly a month. The media was very happy to push all blame on him, and none on the mentally unstable woman who had attacked him. To make him feel, if only slightly better, Steve had used his new tools to carve out a delicious rib dinner from the rapist he had privately dealt with the month before.

 

He was actually glad he had  splurged  and tak en the chances he had. He had gotten a boning knife, a fil l et knife, a cleaver, a butcher's knife, a chef's parer, a steak knife, a nd a slicing knife from the chef's store .  In the autopsy toolkit, he had  toothed forceps, rib cutters,  scissors, a bread knife, an enterotome, hammer with hook and a chisel, a scalpel,  and a bone saw.  He'd gotten rid of the hagedorn needle after a long debate with whether or not he could make use of it. 

 

Steve held out his left arm, flexed again, and remembered the sight of himself sliding into Tony's mouth, feeling the squeeze and pulse of his throat around him. He turned his arm over and thought about how best to do this.

 

He picked out a fillet knife, and thought, well, this would be the best place to start.

 

~::~

 

Later that night, he went out into the corridor and asked JARVIS if Tony had eaten yet. JARVIS did not have surveillance in any of the Avengers' suites, and a code Natasha had forced Tony to integrate into the system made sure that he couldn't look in whenever he wanted to.  JARVIS was only programed to monitor heart rates in each room, mostly for Bruce's sake and somewhat for everyone else. If anyone's heart rate spiked suddenly, or if an unknown pulse was detected, JARVIS was to dispatch whoever else was in the tower to help. In case any of them were to change their minds and wanted JARVIS in their rooms, they each had a personalized password to use.

 

Steve and, most recently, Tony were the only hearts that ever beat in his suite, and his night terrors, when they happened, did not require anyone going into the freezer box. Just in case someone got curious, though (he lived with an alien god, two spies, an engineer, and a scientist –  _of course_ they were all curious), he always filled the top of the box with frozen fruits and vegetables, ice, and meat he had already quartered and wrapped. He had invited each of his teammates at least once to look inside under the pretense of letting them pick what he cooked for dinner so that they wouldn't go digging through it without him there to supervise.

 

If they knew what was in there, they had no reason to be curious about what was at the bottom.

 

JARVIS told him that Tony had had a kale smoothie before noon, and had knowingly not mentioned how much coffee he had drank.

 

“Thanks, JARVIS,” Steve said.

 

YOU ARE QUITE WELCOME, CAPTAIN ROGERS, was the reply. I HOPE THAT YOU ARE ON YOUR WAY TO REMEDY THE SITUATION?

 

“I am, JARVIS.” He held up the sandwich he had made. Tony told him that JARVIS wasn't a presence in the ceiling and that he didn't have to keep holding things up that he wanted JARVIS to see, but it was a habit he had formed that he didn't think needed to be fixed.

 

QUITE GOOD, CAPTAIN ROGERS. SHALL I TELL HIM THAT YOU ARE ON YOUR WAY?

 

“No, thank you, JARVIS. I'd rather surprise him.”

 

AS YOU WISH. IF I MAY ASK, HOW WERE YOU INJURED, CAPTAIN ROGERS? MY SCANNERS NEVER INDICATED THAT YOU WERE IN PAIN.

 

Steve had prepared a story for this, and he had held two fingers to his pulse to make sure his heart hadn't jumped at the lie. “Of course you can, JARVIS. I was making Tony a sandwich and I guess I just sort of got... sucked back into the past for a minute. I raised the knife a little too high and brought it down a little too soon and I didn't even realize it till it was too late.”

 

YOU HAVE NOT HAD FLASHBACKS IN QUITE AWHILE.

 

“Yeah, I know. I thought I was doing pretty good...”

 

FOR WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN THROUGH AND WHAT YOU HAVE HAD TO DO, I BELIEVE YOU ARE ALLOWED TO, AS YOU WOULD SAY, 'SLIP UP' EVERY ONCE IN AWHILE. I KNOW FOR A FACT THAT NO ONE IN THIS TOWER WOULD THINK LESS OF YOU FOR IT.

 

“Thanks, JARVIS. I needed that.”

 

YOU ARE QUITE WELCOME, CAPTAIN ROGERS. SHALL I CONTACT DR. BANNER FOR YOU?

 

“Nah, it's fine. I took care of it.”

 

IF YOU SAY SO, CAPTAIN ROGERS.

 

“Thanks for looking out for me, though.”

 

IT IS ONE OF MY MANY DUTIES. AND, CAPTAIN ROGERS?

 

“Yeah?”

 

THANK YOU, FOR LOOKING OUT FOR  SIR.

 

Steve smiled. “It's just one of my many duties.”

 

If he thought JARVIS could laugh, it would have been right then. VERY WELL, CAPTAIN ROGERS.

 

He went down to the basement and listened to the scream of AC/DC for a long moment, just watching Tony weld through the glass door. Eventually, he entered in his code and infiltrated Stark's mind, the heart of his creativity, and the birthing site of some of his greatest creations.

 

Well, aside from Afghanistan, but no one talked about that.

 

He waited till Tony put down the welder before he slipped up behind him and pressed a non-intrusive kiss to the back of his neck. He thought it might be too much, but the salt of sweat and tang of Tony was worth it, as well as the startled squeal he got from the man. “Hi, Tony.”

 

“Jesus, Steve.” Tony threw down his goggles and glared at him. “What have I told you guys about sneaking up behind me? Between you and Thing 1 and Thing 2 upstairs, I'm going to lose my fucking mind!”

 

It was clear, in that moment, that Tony was still a little upset. Not incredibly so, not enough to force Steve back out or try to slash him open with words, but enough to put Tony on edge, enough to make him wary. It was there in his eyes, in the plastic curve of his smile after he caught his breath.

 

“So, Steve-O, what can I do for you?” He spotted the sandwich in Steve's hands, and then the bandage around his arm. “What happened to you?”

 

“I accidentally cut myself,” he said. “I made you a sandwich. JARVIS said that you haven't eaten anything for awhile, so I expect you to eat it.” It took more control than he thought he had to not hand-feed Tony, to not tell him where the thick slice of meat in the sandwich had come from.

 

He was strangely aroused as well, and just hoped that it didn't progress into an erection anytime soon.

 

“You don't 'accidentally' cut yourself, Steve, you're a super-soldier. Last time I saw you even trip, we were on a helicarrier that was making a dive for the ocean.”

 

Steve looked down. “I had a flashback.”

 

He didn't have to say anything else because nothing else was required from Tony. Instead, the other man took the plate from his hands and said, “Uh, thanks, Steve. I guess I was getting a little hungry.”

 

They found a seat in the brilliance and wreckage of Tony's lab and he watched, avidly, as Tony bit into the sandwich and rolled his eyes in absolute pleasure.

 

“This is delicious. What's in this?”

 

Steve managed a shrug, somehow. “Just lettuce, tomato, roasted mushrooms, a cross cut that I sauteed...”

 

“What kind of cross cut?” Tony asked curiously, frowning at the sandwich.

 

Steve smiled. “You don't really care about what kind of cross cut it is, do you?”

 

“No, not really, but I might want to know so that I can get a chef to make this for me.”

 

“You don't need anyone else to make this for you,” he said, and was proud of how he kept the ferocious possessiveness that reared up in him out of his voice. He sounded calm and humored. “I'm here.”

 

Tony eyed him and swallowed what was in his mouth. “You won't be for long if we take the road you want to travel.”

 

Good, they were going to talk about that.

 

“You asked first what we were going to be to each other,” he pointed out. “I answered honestly what you were, are, to me.”

 

“Love's supposed to come later!” Tony exploded, and he slapped the last half of the sandwich down on the plate. “Hell, it's not supposed to come at all! You're eventually supposed to realize how much of an asshole douche-bag I am, break off the relationship, and say how we'll be best as 'just teammates'. You can't bring _love_ into that!”

 

“I think I can,” he countered. “I'm pretty sure I already have. Tony, I've been living with you for a year and a half now. I'm not walking into this blind and unprepared. I might not know you like a lover, not yet,” he made that a promise, “but I know you as a housemate, a teammate, and a best friend. I know your nightmares just as well as you know mine, and I know that you count cards on game nights.”

 

“Look, alright, I said that wasn't something I do _consciously_ –”

 

“I love you,” he interrupted. Tony shut up. “You don't have to say it back, or even acknowledge me when I say it, I already told you that. All you have to know is that I love who you are, and I have loved who you are, and what that means is that I don't want you to change. I don't want you to be afraid of a relationship with me because you feel like I need something more or something, something _grander_. It's not necessary.”

 

“Pepper knew me for way longer than you have,” Tony grumbled. “She had to deal with me at my worst. She could tell you stories.”

 

“Tony, I'm not talking about the person you were – I'm talking about the person you _are_. Eat your sandwich, please.”

 

Tony did, grumbling and muttering the entire time.

 

Steve thought, alright. Tony wasn't comfortable with the emotional talks, he had already known that. It would be best to steer this back into more familiar territory.

 

“I love that you eat the food that I make,” he told Tony, and finally let go of the arousal that had been sizzling in his belly. He let Tony see just how turned on he was when the other man looked questioningly up at him. “When it was just Bucky and me, we were lucky to share a can of soup between us in a day. And then, during the war, the Howling Commandos and I lived on C-rations, or whatever we could hunt down. When I could, I fed them, because I wanted them to be strong and healthy. I never really thought about after the war, I was too busy living it, do you understand? But, sometimes, when I looked at Peggy, I imagined putting just a few more pounds on her, because I wanted to know that I had given her food and that she didn't have to go hungry.”

 

He smiled. “I didn't realize till I started thinking about you,” not 'falling in love', because he had Tony's full attention now and he didn't want to poison it, “that I could get hot and bothered by it. I watch you enjoy the food I make, watch you put on weight, and it's...” He couldn't really think of the words, so he just reached out and pulled Tony's free hand into his lap.

 

Tony's eyes were wide and dark again. “You  _do_ have a feeding kink, then, huh?”

 

“Yeah, I guess so,” he admitted. “Please finish the sandwich.”

 

Tony did, slowly, one bite at a time, making the filthiest sounds of enjoyment Steve had ever heard.

 

When he finally finished, he licked his fingers clean, and then his lips, and his eyes were hooded as he watched Steve watch him.

 

“Still hungry?” Steve asked. His voice was choked and low.

 

“I think I could go for another bite of you,” Tony returned easily with a sharp grin.

 

Steve swore in that moment that he almost came in his sweats. He grabbed Tony by the hips and made a round trip to the abused couch stuffed into a corner of the room. It had been luxurious and high-priced once, he could tell, but it had grown to be a sorry looking thing with tears and stains.

 

He fell into the cushions. Though he wanted to just lay down and have Tony put his mouth on him, he thought that, this time, he would return a favor or two, and he started with kissing Tony to babbling, and then putting his fingers between those snarky lips. Tony sucked and licked and nipped and pulled them all the way in to the last knuckle.

 

Steve kept his weight on his uninjured arm as he jerked Tony's pants down to his knees with the other hand. He wrapped one fist around Tony's dick, massaged it for a good minute or two, and then slid one slick finger along the crack of Tony's ass, rubbing and teasing the puckered hole that blinked at his ministrations.

 

Tony moaned. “Yes, Steve, just do it. I'm not a virgin, just put it in, c'mon, babe...”

 

Tony's voice broke into a growing wail as Steve slid one finger in, slowly but forcefully.

 

“Jesus,” Tony cursed.

 

Steve chuckled and used the hand on Tony's dick to pull the other man's shirt over his head, but not completely off so that it tangled on his arms. He pressed open mouthed kisses over Tony's chest and abdomen, nibbling at the weight that he, _he_ , had built on Tony.

 

“ _Steve_ ,” Tony groaned. “Fuck.”

 

He didn't have Tony's skill when it came to giving head, but he liked to think he had enough enthusiasm to make up for it. Judging by the noises and curses that came out of his lover, Tony thought so too.

 

He progressed to two fingers, three fingers, and then just scissored them into him, pressing and searching for Tony's prostate until the other man started yelling and pulling at his hair.

 

“God, Steve, fuck me!”

 

He smiled around Tony, and sucked him in as deep as his disappointingly active gag reflex would let him.

 

“Shit, I'm coming, Steve, _Steve_ , fuck, Oh, God, Oh, God Bless America, I'm coming. Gotta stop, Steve, stop, _shit_ , stop –”

 

Semen was not a particular taste that Steve liked. As a matter of fact, he thought he had eaten rotten food that had tasted better during the war. Tony had swallowed, though, and this was a part of Tony, something that had come from Tony.

 

He held it in his mouth, swishing it around, and debated if that was really the reasoning he was going with, considering that he certainly would not swallow Tony's feces or urine.

 

This was turning out not to be as nice as when Tony had swallowed for him.

 

Tony chuckled drowsily and Steve looked up into his face. He was flushed, almost glowing, and the edges of his expression had softened into something close to tranquility and adoration. “You don't have to swallow, babe.” His voice had acquired a nice rumble that licked at Steve's dying arousal provocatively. “No one likes how it tastes.”

 

He forced it down, because he probably had eaten worse things at one point or another and he had learned to never waste. “You swallowed,” he pointed out.

 

Tony licked his lips as if even the memory was still delicious. Steve's hands and feet tingled at the very idea that Tony so deeply enjoyed the taste of him.

 

“Well, when a national icon comes down your throat so hard that he passes out, you kind of don't think of spitting.”

 

Steve huffed and frowned. “You didn't pass out.”

 

“I'm also not a 90 year old virgin with the refractory period of a hormonal teenager.” Tony pulled him up and kissed him nice and deep. He sighed into Steve's mouth, shifting his hips and bearing down on Steve's fingers still buried deep inside of him. “We'll work on it, sweetheart.”

 

He actually really liked that. If they were going to work on it, that meant they were going to do it again.

 

He grinned and nodded. “Alright, Tony.”

 

Tony ran his fingers through his hair. “You realize, of course, that I can't gain anymore weight, right?”

 

Steve frowned. “What? Why? Is this about weight shaming?” He imagined, for a moment, people making beached whale comments about Tony, or newspaper comics making fun of him, or even the media with their headlines screaming about Tony's weight gain and posting the most depressing picture they could possibly come up with of Tony right beneath it.

 

He had a sudden, horrible vision of Tony in two years, doing a Weight Watchers commercial and saying how his life was so much better now that he had lost so-and-so amount of weight with a side-by-side comparison of him before and after.

 

Tony busted out laughing. “Oh, God, you should see your face! No, no, I don't give two fucks about weight shaming. People can say what they want, it's my body, not theirs, and I can do with it what I want, just like I have been for just about my entire life. No, it's about the Iron Man suit. How many girth adjustments do you think I can make to it? Well, the answer is none now, because I've already had to make them, and that throws off my balance, weight distribution, weapons positioning, armor calculations... No, alright. Not even your dinners are worth what I would have to go through. I'm not giving up being Iron Man because you make good food.”

 

Steve wrapped his hands morosely on Tony's lower half, feeling the soft curves in his hands.

 

“Damn it, Steve, now you look like I ran over your puppy. You don't even have a puppy.”

 

“Can we just, maintain the weight you're at now?” he asked hopefully.

 

Tony considered it. “I'd actually like it better if I could lose a few pounds. The suit's pulled on one piece at a time, right? So imagine if I get pinched between two pieces and then they're locked together.”

 

Steve winced. “Yeah, okay, that would be bad.”

 

“Exactly. But, uh... Aside from that, sure.”

 

Steve framed his hands on Tony's belly. “Sure?”

 

“Sure.”

 

He kissed Tony's belly button. “Thank you.”

 

“Hey, who are you grateful to? Me, or my muffin top?”

 

He smiled up at him. “Always you, Tony. Always.”

 

 


	2. The Beast Is Ugly

“Steve.”

 

He stretched out on the bed, going from asleep to awake in a moment. He had been aware of Tony sliding out of bed, like he was always aware of him sliding into it. Last night, Tony had gone to bed incredibly early compared to usual, and while it had been new and surprising for him to be awake before Steve, he hadn't thought to actually get out of bed to join him just yet.

 

It felt like a good, lazy morning to him. He was even debating not going for a run in exchange for taking Tony back to bed. A fuzzy warmth opened up in his chest. _Tony_.

 

They had been together for almost two years now. They had more downs than ups, but when they were up, they were in the cosmos. Most days, Steve wanted to strangle Tony, which wasn't a new thing, and then he just wanted angry sex, which was proving to be a very good substitute for murder. On other days, he just wanted to keep his hands on him, to know that this was his, and they had time together, that nothing could take Tony away from him or him away from Tony.

 

For the most part, Tony loved the touchy feely part of their relationship, even if he whined and grouched about it in front of the team (who did not fall for it for a single minute). If Steve were to be presumptuous, he would even say that Tony loved to nibble and chew on Steve's collarbone and ribs, like Steve had begged him to do. Deep, bleeding bite marks that should scar looked like love bites by the end of the day, and always put him in a good mood to see in the mirror.

 

Tony had shown him sources on vorarephilia, which he believed Steve had and teased him about. Vorarephilia summed it up pretty good, Steve admitted, in that he did fantasize about Tony eating him and that it aroused him sexually.

 

Tony had no clue that Steve sometimes did feed him his flesh. After the first time, though, he made sure not to make it so visible, and made the cuts shallower so that they healed faster. He was pleased by how seamlessly and quickly he regenerated muscles compared to others. It did make him hungrier than usual, though.

 

Steve had tried for shame after finding a name for most taboo of his fetishes. Tony had, like he did with everything that brought everyone else the greatest embarrassment and made them the most afraid to reveal, pointed at it and declared it no big deal at all, just like he had with Fury only having one eye and Bruce's alternate personality.

 

“It's not like you're actually eating people,” he'd said, and he'd smirked dangerously. “I'm the one who keeps putting you in my mouth.”

 

And then he had demonstrated by biting his way over Steve's biceps.

 

Steve went from loving this man, to loving him desperately.

 

“Steve!”

 

“Coming, Tony,” he called, and forced himself out of bed. He padded in the direction of Tony's voice.

 

The freezer box was open. For one wild moment, Steve thought this was the end. Tony knew now. He had managed for two amazing years to keep this from him, and now, by some ironic, horrible coincidence, it was all over.

 

A sudden, surprising wave of calm came over him. Tony knew now. Whatever Tony decided to do with him, he would do without a fight.

  
The decision was easy to make. He thought there would be some inner turmoil, but there was only acceptance.

 

If Bucky had wanted to turn him in, if any of the Howling Commandos had wanted to turn him in, he would have gone willingly back then too. This was something he did for their sake – if they didn't want it, he wasn't going to kill them for it, and he wasn't going to try and deny the obvious.

 

He went slowly into the kitchen and held his hands up near his head so that Tony wouldn't get scared. He was even ready to give Tony his personal password so that JARVIS could turn on surveillance in his suite and leave Tony feeling not so vulnerable, even if Tony would never admit to feeling such.

 

Tony scratched his ass and frowned at him over his shoulder. “Do you realize that all of your blueberries are frozen? All I want right now are some blueberries on my pancakes, and they're frozen. What do you have to say for yourself?”

 

Steve glanced down into the freezer box. The layer of fruits, vegetables, and wrapped meat was undisturbed.

 

“You can make pancakes?” Steve asked.

 

“Har har har, asshole. I thought I'd be a nice boyfriend and set everything out for you so that we could have a nice, unhealthy breakfast, and then some sticky, sweet sex.” Tony held out his other hand with a bag of frozen blueberries and shoved it into his chest. “What do I do about this?” he complained. “Steve, they're frozen. They're useless to me.”

 

He actually laughed. “Don't worry, Tony, there will be blueberries on your pancakes.” He pressed a kiss to Tony's forehead, then his mouth. He put his free hand, the other holding the blueberries, on Tony's belly, and felt the soft flesh mold around his fingers. Tony had worked it down a few pounds, as he had said he would, but always stopped short of making his abdomen hard again.

 

“Do you want chocolate chips too?”

 

“I don't know, Steve, do I need oxygen to survive?”

 

~::~

 

Even though his secret was still safe, Steve started questioning himself after that.

 

Mostly, he started questioning whether or not to tell Tony and, by extent, his team about where the meat came from. He wanted them to know, wanted them to have that choice of whether or not to keep eating it or to turn him in. He also wanted to keep it a secret so that they could say in all honesty that they had never known he was a cannibal in the case that someone else ever did find out about what was at the bottom of his freezer box.

 

He debated it with himself till his two year anniversary with Tony before he even came to a decision.

 

And it was all because Tony got down on one knee and proposed, looking arrogant and terrified all at once, as if this was just a formality because he knew Steve would say yes and, at the same time, as if this was his last hope.

 

Steve looked into those dark eyes and kissed Tony softly. “I want to say yes,” he began, and Tony's expression crumbled to impenetrable stone as he tried to retreat. Steve grabbed his wrist before he could bring the ring back to his chest and stand. “But I have to show you something first.”

 

“What?” Tony tried to joke, sounding as shaky and weak as his smile. “You're a werewolf, right? I always thought you looked hairier around the full moon.”

 

Steve shook his head. “Come back home with me. I'll make you a filet.”

 

“Steve, this really isn't the time for –”

 

“You'll understand once I show you how I make my filets,” he interrupted.

 

“I thought that was a secret.”

 

“If you really want to marry me, it can't be. Not anymore.”

 

Between them, the fear was palpable. Tony was probably certain that this was Steve trying to brush him off gently and Steve didn't have the words, or the courage, to correct him at that moment.

 

“The team's waiting in the common room,” Tony told him numbly. “They, uh, found out about the... engagement ring.” There was so much pain in his voice.

 

“Can we take the elevator past them?” he asked.

 

Tony shrugged. “Probably.”

 

It hurt to see how much Tony was hurting. This was something that had to be done, though.

 

They rode past the common area, straight up to Steve's level. He grabbed Tony's cold hand and steered him into the kitchen. He took a deep breath and opened the freezer box.

 

“Steve, I'm really not in the mood for dinner right now,” Tony said from behind him. Then he got really quiet as Steve stacked up the fruits and vegetables and wrapped meats, and then a human thigh and a partially skinned human forearm. He pulled out his leather knife roll and flipped it open on the cutting table, carefully selecting the fillet knife before getting out a frying pan and lighting the stove beneath it. He put a dollop of butter in the pan, letting it sizzle and spit.

 

He looked expectantly back at Tony.

 

“That's, what? Is this some sort of joke? Is this, what? What is this, what's going on? Steve, I'm not laughing, this isn't funny, and this wasn't necessary. You could have just said – NO!”

 

But Steve had already slid the fillet knife into his left oblique. There was a familiar fire, body trying to jerk away from the agony and his hand spasming around the knife. Just like every time before, though, he compartmentalized the pain, made it something that was happening to someone else, and neatly filleted a cut of oblique and slapped it into the frying pan. He let the wave of dizziness and pain roar through him for a moment, making Tony's frantic voice sound a little too far away to be in the same room, before he forcefully brought himself back to focus.

 

“If you keep panicking, JARVIS is going to call the team in to investigate,” he pointed out as smoothly as he could, which was barely smooth at all.

 

Tony was suddenly riveted by the fillet knife in Steve's hand. “Looks like you have plenty of meat to last awhile. And, hey, if you're eating yourself, that means you have a pretty unlimited source, right? Muscular regeneration for you must take about a fourth the amount of time it takes for us regular, apparently edible humans.”

 

“Tony, I'm not going to kill you. Or eat you. Or the team.” He scooped out a handful of ice from the freezer box and gauze from the cupboard next to Tony's head. Tony had faced down terrorists and home invasions, betrayal and heartbreak, being connected to a car battery, and death more times than Steve cared to count. His breathing was pointedly deep and slow as he forced himself to appear calm and collected, arms wrapped over his chest above his arc reactor. His eyes followed Steve carefully.

 

He didn't move when Steve invaded his space, nor did he relax and welcome him. It couldn't even be classified as a good sign because this was how Tony faced danger – without backing down.

 

He packed the ice into the wound and then wrapped it shut with the gauze. The shot of freezing cold and searing pain against the avulsion injury was enough to make him stumble on his way to flip the cut. He carefully added spices and oils, and he knew the moment Tony realized that Steve wasn't eating his own flesh, and never had.

 

“Oh, God.” He slapped a hand over his mouth and started gagging. “I've been – _no_. The whole team – Steve, what the Hell? Why? Why would you do that?” He swung a hand towards the body parts. “Who was that?”

 

“Do you remember when HYDRA attacked two months ago?”

 

Tony slumped against the counter. “Jesus. S.H.I.E.L.D. was saying we weren't catching them all, but that wasn't true, was it? We caught them all, every time – you just took some of them home.”

 

“We didn't always catch them all, Tony. But, yeah, usually, we did.”

 

“... How long?”

 

Steve sighed. “Three years.”

 

Tony laughed, a horrible, broken sound. “Three years. Yeah, that's great. That's just fan-fucking-tastic!”

 

He turned to Tony. “Now you understand why I had to show you this first, right? I would marry you without a second thought, Tony. You are the most important person in my life, there is nothing I wouldn't do for you.”

 

“Oh, God.” Tony was still laughing. “Oh, shit, that's great...”

 

“I love you, Tony,” he said quietly. “I love you too much to be married to you and still have this secret.”

 

Tony got quiet and looked at him with wide, wide eyes. “Just... Just tell me why. I mean, if you just wanted to butcher something, I could have ordered you some live pigs or some shit. Probably could have gotten you a license to go safari hunting. That has to be more exciting than _this_.”

 

“It's not about killing them, Tony,” he said. “They're already dead. No reason for it go to waste.” He could still hear Bucky in his head telling him that.

 

“... This has something to do with World War II.” It wasn't a question. Tony stared at him. “You know, I remember hearing some jokes about how you better watch out for fat Nazis.”

 

Steve shook his head. “They sent Bucky and me into Leningrad, just after the Finnish and Germans closed it off.”

 

Tony's eyes narrowed. “Yeah, my history sucks pretty fucking bad. You're going to have to tell me a little more for me to get the whole 'How I became a cannibal' thing.”

 

Steve smiled bitterly. “They call it 'The Siege of Leningrad'. Enemy forces circled Leningrad and cut off all trade and transportation to almost three million people with only enough food and fuel to last a month, maybe two. The Red Army was outnumbered and couldn't liberate the city, but Leningrad still refused to surrender to Nazi Germany. Bucky and I slipped through in the December of 1942 with the rest of the Howling Commandos and Peggy waiting in a neighboring town for our signal.”

 

“Why were you guys sent into Leningrad?” Tony asked, keeping the conversation going. Steve knew it for what it was – a distraction method. Keep the enemy talking – the more they talk, the less they're doing.

 

He let it happen and focused on the oblique. “Nazi Germany attacked Leningrad within three months of declaring open war on the Soviet Union. Leningrad wasn't even an American concern at the time. Everyone was just waiting for the Red Army to take it back. But then HYDRA moved in and it became my problem. Leningrad was, and still is, one of the largest cities in Russia, with one of the largest populations. HYDRA began performing experiments on the civilians, tried to force them to swear allegiance.”

 

“And that just isn't a go in Captain America's book.”

 

“It wasn't a go in the Howling Commandos book. Bucky and I went in to eradicate HYDRA and evacuate the people, but then we got trapped. That winter was unusually cold, even for Russia, and there was no heat, no power, no water supply or food.”

 

“People were getting desperate,” Tony guessed.

 

“We all were. Bucky and I were taken in by an older woman because we looked young and strong to her and she was old and not so fast. She saw in us an opportunity to keep herself safe and we went along with it because we had nowhere else to go and trying to find somewhere else to be probably would have cost us our lives. We didn't eat, Tony. Whatever food there was, she ate, and we tried to pretend we weren't staring. We were used to being hungry, but we had never starved like we had in Leningrad.”

 

“... Did you eat her?” Tony asked softly.

 

Steve paused. “Not right then. Later, but that was after she died and with her permission. She was old, Tony, and there was no medicine to go around or electricity to keep her warm. She laid down and she told us not to let her go to waste.”

 

“How sweet of her.”

 

He buried the hurt deep. “I was the one who realized first out of Bucky and me what we were eating, when she first served us some boiled meat. I was curious and went into the kitchen, thinking that it was a pig or something and that I would be helpful and chop it up for her. I didn't see anything, so I looked into the pot. There was no meat in it – she was seasoning the strips with the last bit of tarragon she had – but I saw something white at the bottom. I waited for the water to cool down and then pulled them out.”

 

“Bones?”

 

Steve shook his head. “Teeth. I grew up in the city, so I was ready to think they were an animal's, but then I ran my tongue over my own teeth.” He still didn't know what had made him do that, made him compare his own to the ones in his hand.

 

“They were human,” Tony guessed.

 

“Not just human,” Steve whispered, then took a deep breath. “They were milk teeth. She had gotten some cuts from a dead orphan, and then she shared it with us. I stopped Bucky from it at first, told him where it came from. He said, 'More reason for it not to go to waste', and he ate it anyway.”

 

“But you got out of Leningrad eventually,” Tony's voice was hard. “Don't you think the cannibalism should have stayed there?”

 

“We lived on C-rations when we could, and what we could find in the wild when we couldn't, Tony. And C-rations don't build up strength or make the hunger go away, not for long. We were still shooting to kill, and I looked at those dead bodies, and I decided that I wouldn't let them go to waste. I did all the dirty work – Bucky and the others never even saw me drag away the bodies. I wanted them to be fed. I wanted them to be strong and healthy.”

 

“Like me.”

 

Steve smiled at Tony, turning his body towards him. “Like you. Because I had loved them, still love them, like the family they were to me. Because I love you and the Avengers like the family you are to me now. I understand that I don't have to do this anymore. It's not necessary, you could probably buy out a butcher's shop and stock up on exotic meats, but it's... Sometimes, we still have to aim to kill. Why let it go to waste?”

 

He put the oblique on a plate and set it down on the counter by Tony's elbow.

 

“Steve, we can get you help. We don't have to tell anyone about this, not even the loonies downstairs, alright? We can – how about I do buy a butcher shop, for you. Huh? They kill pigs and horses, why let _them_ go to waste?”

 

Steve thrilled at the touch of Tony's hand over his wound. “And you sure as Hell don't have to do this anymore. God, what would you have done if you bled out or cut into an artery or some shit like that? Shouldn't we get you to a hospital right now? Bruce – we can get Bruce to look at this. We'll say, shit, I don't know what we'll say –”

 

“You would really help me cover this up?” Steve asked.

 

Tony paused. “Steve, I... I love you. If I have to, I will turn you in. I will even shoot you if I have to. But, but if we can stop this, if we can just pretend this had never happened...”

 

“We can't, Tony. I can't, and I'm certainly not going to ask you to.” Steve dipped his head and kissed Tony's temple. “I knew, when I decided to tell you this, that you might not accept it. It's okay, Tony. Do what feels right, I won't fight you.”

 

“S.H.I.E.L.D. would put you down for this!” Tony suddenly yelled. “What, you think they'll let it get out that Captain America was a cannibal who fed his team dead people? They'll kill you and make it look like an accident! Do you even care what they'll do to the rest of us if they find out what the Hell you put down our throats?”

 

“Yes. And I want you to know, it will be okay, no matter what.”

 

“Okay? _Okay_? What will be okay?”

 

“I've had awhile to think about this, Tony. I'm a strategist, remember?”

 

“What does that mean? Steve, what are you planning?”

 

“If you don't want anyone to know, and if you think that I need to be put down, then make it look like an accident.”

 

“Excuse you?”

 

“You're smart, Tony. Kill me and make it look like an accident.”

 

Tony's breath stuttered. “That's not fair, Steve.”

 

“No, but I know you'll figure out a way.”

 

“We're talking about me killing you like you're fine with it!”

 

“You were going through the freezer box, looking for blueberries, and I thought, for one crazy moment, that you had found me out. You probably don't remember that, but I think about it at least twice a day, because I had never felt so calm and at peace as when I decided that I would do whatever you decided I had to do. Even if that meant incarceration or death, I was ready because what I did, what I do, is for you and the team, and if you all thought it was wrong and a horrible thing for me to do, then I deserved whatever punishment you chose for me.”

 

“Then we should put this to a group vote!” Tony immediately latched onto the idea. “Don't force this on me, you asshole!”

 

Steve shook his head. “Here and now, Tony. They're my family, the sort of family I never thought I wanted and they're everything I need – but you're my everything. If you can't have me around, then I can't stay here.”

 

“No! No, no, no! Steve, stop. This is just – bullshit! Just – fuck!” There was a moment where Tony looked like he was ready to scream. He pulled himself together by sheer force of will and kept his eyes down. “I need to think about this. Steve, I need to –"

 

“I won't trap you here,” he told him.

 

Tony practically ran away. Steve looked down at the plate and the untouched filet.

 

He wrapped it up and put it in the fridge. Then he went to bed and laid down carefully. He watched the ceiling for a long time and waited for someone to barge in, for the windows to shatter as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents fell from the sky on chords.

 

None of the above happened.

 

~::~

 

He woke up slowly, still somewhat dizzy, to the knowledge that someone was staring at him. He looked down and Clint was sitting cross-legged at a corner of the bed. He looked Steve over solemnly.

 

“So,” Clint started. “You told him about where the meat came from?”

 

Steve was suddenly wide awake. “You knew?”

 

Clint shrugged. “We got stuck in the Tian Shan once, these huge mountain ranges in Central Asia. It was Coulson, Nat, and me, just trying to find a way back to civilization with all of our communications down and the only transportation being one foot in front of the other. Luckily for us, the crash was planned, and our intended target had snipers in hiding waiting for us. We found them first. They were the pretty much the _only_ thing we found. It's something we don't talk about.”

 

“You've known all along.”

 

“Well, we also already knew about Leningrad.”

 

“There's no mention of cannibalism in my report on Leningrad.”

 

“Dude, everyone knows what happened in Leningrad. It doesn't make you less of a person.”

 

“There's no reason for me to do this anymore,” Steve said quietly.

 

“No, not really,” Clint agreed. “But it's there, right? We eat pigs and dolphins and they're intelligent just like us. They just don't know the right language to scream in.”

 

“Do Bruce and Thor know?”

 

“Not sure what the Asgardian rule is for cannibalism is, but it might not be the same as Earth's, so, maybe. Banner – don't think so. Maybe? He's been to some pretty depraved places.”

 

“Huh.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

They suffered in silence for awhile.

 

“You let Tony leave your room after telling him?” Clint asked.

 

Steve shrugged. “I was pretty willing to let him kill me if he really wanted to. I didn't really see a reason to keep him here if he didn't want to be.”

 

“He hasn't talked to us yet, so he might just be going over it, trying to figure out what to do next.”

 

“I'm waiting for him to decide.”

 

Clint nodded. “Want me to stay with you? Nat and I could come up and keep you company if you want.”

 

Steve thought about it, then shook his head. “If Tony needs support, I don't want him to feel like he can't trust you and Natasha.”

 

“You might have the strangest eating habits a man could have,” Clint said, “But you're still one of the best I know.”

 

“Thanks, Clint. I needed that.”

 

~::~

 

Over the next three days, he didn't leave the tower. He didn't want Tony to think he was running away. When that reasoning wore out, he told himself that he didn't want to be out of sight if and when Tony came to a decision. Even though he would rather take his runs outside in the fresh air, he made due with the indoor gym. He thought that Clint and Natasha must have warned off the others because no one bothered him. Not even S.H.I.E.L.D..

 

He jogged back up to his level instead of taking the elevator. JARVIS hadn't been treating him any differently lately, but Steve still felt he should leave him alone whenever he could. Besides, the stairs were more physical, and he needed to be active instead of still or else he would have time to think, and there was nothing good to think about.

 

He walked to his private kitchen for a post-workout snack.

 

Tony was at the table, the oblique filet in front of him that Steve had made three days ago. Steve stood in the doorway, frozen and breathless as if he had just caught sight of some rare creature and didn't want to spook it away.

 

That was about how he felt, actually.

 

Tony didn't look up at him at first, even though Steve knew that Tony was aware of him. He just stared at the filet, hands stained with oil and grease just laying in his lap.

 

“So,” he said, maybe an eternity later, “my fiance is a cannibal.”

 

Steve's heart jumped. “Fiance?”

 

Tony shrugged. “Well, he said he'd marry me conditional on _my_ response to, you know, him eating people and all.”

 

“That's swell, Tony. I'm sure he's really happy knowing that.”

 

Happy wasn't a strong enough emotion to embody the swirl of relief, love, joy, and bliss that swamped through him, but it was a nice start.

 

“He better be,” Tony muttered, then got quiet again. “You know what? No. I'm pissed at you.” He finally looked up at Steve. Even pointed at him, like he needed to clarify who 'you' was. “Because of you, I almost became a vegetarian! I am a red-blooded American, I'm not living my life on tofu and rabbit food. So fuck you.”

 

“I don't think you would have lasted long anyway.”

 

“No, I wouldn't have. And you wanna know why?”

 

Steve took a slow step closer. “Why?”

 

“Because then I would remember this one time that my fiance made me a sandwich. It was the best damn thing I ever tasted, but he – _you_ – hurt yourself making it.” Tony clenched his jaw. “You didn't have a flashback, did you?”

 

Steve shook his head. “No. I wanted to feed you, Tony. Take care of you.”

 

“I thought that's what the _other_ bodies were for.”

 

“They were, for the most part. Some days, though, I wanted to know that _I_ was what fed you.”

 

Tony cradled his head in his hands. “I kept telling myself it was sick, just so you know. That you were fucking sick, and I was going to have to get my stomach pumped, and that I was done with this whole 'love' thing if this is the crap I get into.”

 

Steve let his head drop. “I'm sorry. You don't have to eat it anymore, now that you know what it is. I won't – I can't – force it down your throat.” He reached out to take the filet.

 

Tony slapped his hand away. “That's _mine_ , you asshole. You cut it out of your own damn body to feed me with it, you're not taking it away!”

 

Steve, startled, looked into Tony's fiery glare. He didn't know what to do, what to say, or even what this meant. “Tony, I'm not a mind reader. You're saying one thing and then another and I – I'm confused. I don't know what you want or if this is even what you want.”

 

“I just – fuck, don't you think I'm confused too? I want you, that hasn't changed. I want to love you unconditionally and that's a lot easier than it should be right now. And this?” He swung the plate around and it clattered on the table. “This is sick and disturbing. You cut out your own muscle to feed me when I could get a five star chef here to fry wagyu steak on pocket change.” He circled the plate with his arms. “I _screamed_ my entire fucking childhood for someone to give me something, anything, and all people threw at me was money, drugs, and sex. Then you're there and slicing yourself open just for me. Just to take care of me. You're fucked up. You're fucked up and I'm fucked up because this is, shit, this is _sweet_. This is, this is...” His shoulders sagged. “This is maybe the most sentimental thing anyone has ever done for me.”

 

Steve thought that maybe his knees felt a little weak. He pulled out the chair next to Tony and plopped down into it.

 

“You know,” Tony began with a light, conversational tone of voice. “This actually explains a lot. Do you know how many times I thought you liked blowjobs more than you did actual sex? Too many times. Didn't even matter who was on top, you just wanted a blowjob.”

 

“You swallow,” Steve said. That could possibly use some explaining. He hedged around in his whirlwind thoughts and couldn't find the urge or the words to describe watching himself slipping between Tony's lips, seeing his face flush and feeling the hot, wet, tight grip of his throat around his head, his tongue laving figure eights on him. Then those teeth, scraping over him, threatening to bite and take from him more than the suck and pull of his throat did, just knowing that, at any moment, Tony could nourish himself on Steve's body... And then he would, drinking Steve's semen with a look of total bliss and feline pride.

 

It was beautiful and incredible. If it wasn't for that, he would probably have been slicing himself a lot more.

 

Tony looked at him. “I'm not eating whoever the fuck that is in the freezer.”

 

“I won't make you.”

 

“But I'd really like to know if I can heat this up in the microwave.”

 

His pants were suddenly and awfully tight. He held out his hand for the plate, eyes on Tony's. Their fingers brushed as Tony handed it over with a look of firm determination on his face. “Don't do this again, you understand me? If you do this to me again, I swear I will throw you off the top of this goddamned building. I promise you this, I will not do this again.”

 

“Then why are you doing it now?”

 

Tony jerked him in close by the back of his neck and ravaged his mouth. It wasn't so much a kiss as a physical fight with tongues and teeth.

 

Steve had the pleasant thought that this might be the closest to spousal abuse Tony would ever let himself get to. The thought reminded him that they were engaged, which meant that they were going to get married, and that meant that Tony was going to wear his ring, that they had to discuss last names, that, God, that meant they belonged to each other.

 

It was almost too much in the most amazing way.

 

Tony pulled back with a sharp bite to his jaw. “This is something of yourself that you gave to me, and I'm a selfish, obviously insane asshole. So I want it. You didn't buy this in a store and then make it up for me, you didn't go out and slaughter a pig to get it, you literally cut it out of your own side to feed it to me. Which, actually, reminds me –” He jerked Steve's shirt up and checked on the wound. It had the appearance of a new, glossy scar instead of a muscle that had been cut out only three days prior. “Okay, that's impressive.”

 

Steve butted his forehead against Tony's. “I love you.”

 

“I think it goes without saying that I might just feel the same way about you,” Tony drawled.

 

“Maybe. I think I'd like to hear it anyway.”

 

“Well, fine. I love you, Hannibal Lecter. Please don't feed me anymore people.”

 

He smiled. “I'll see what I can do.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I probably should wait a day to spruce this up and go back through it with a fine-tooth comb, but it's midnight and this story already sucked up too much of my life. If you feel I should add any more tags, or have any suggestions, or see something that bothers you, please don't feel troubled to tell me.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, everyone is a cannibal. You are a cannibal, and you are a cannibal! Cannibals all around us!


End file.
